Simian: Mac OS X package deployment via App Engine(google-opensource.blogspot.com)
google-opensource.blogspot.com
Simian: Mac OS X package deployment via App Engine
http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/01/simian-mac-os-x-package-deployment-via.html
4 comments
It should be apple doing this, but I'll take google, if that's all there is. Macports, fink, brew -- these are all interesting, and those who work on them are generous and to be admired. However, none of these is perfect, and fragmentation across several halfway-sufficient schemes is not helpful. The largeness of what one might assume will be the google project will, it can only be hoped, lead to some coalescence of effort. How nice it would be to do the equivalent of apt-get to install something, with reasonable confidence, or hope, that it won't break something else.
A bit off topic: this is another great example of how open source works well. In this case Google can release Simian, perhaps get back good software contributions, and sharing does no harm to their business. A win, all around.
This looks pretty interesting. I wonder if they will integrate Homebrew in any capacity. It would be great to have there apps on the install list.
Munki is the engine and the great front-end, friendly, user-facing GUI which offers optional(self-service) installs, mandatory installs, and removals(with a certain amount of elbow-grease). You can approve and serve all packages, or point Apple Software Updates at Apple's servers if desired.
What this is not: A replacement for Fink, Macports, Homebrew, Babushka, Puppet, Chef, the Casper suite, Absolute Manage(formerly LANRev), Filewave, KACE, Radmind, or Apple Mac OS X Server's Software Update Service. This can be used in conjunction with any of the above, and is extensible for large corporate IT needs.
EDIT: currently Simian does not support serving pkgs from any location, but that is planned in the upcoming features, and is currently a capability of Munki when rolling your own webserver - Thanks to @glarizza http://code.google.com/p/simian/#Upcoming_Features